OK these are fairly basic questions i think. Firstly I was considering upgrading the 2GB RAM to 4GB on my macbook, but firstly wanted someone to explain what activity monitor is telling me about my memory. There is Free, wired, active, inactive and used. I can work out what free and used mean lol, but what do the other 3 mean. Right now it says I have 9.8MB free lol, so im guessing i am in desperate need of an upgrade, or is that normal?

Secondly if i am going to upgrade, can someone give me some advice on which are the best brands to get for RAM? is it simple enough to install yourself or should i take it to a apple store?

OK last think was about my hard disk space. If I put my macbook to sleep witout shutting down i notice my hard disk space decreases (though it appears to recover it when i do restart it). I havent shut it down since sunday, and its gone down about 4GB!? is that normal?

For your RAM...The free is RAM that's not being currently used. The "Inactive" is memory that was being used, but now isn't...but can be by another program IIRC. Rebooting should free up all the "inactive" and move to to the free catagory. The way to tell if you can benefit from 4GB is to look at the page out number. If it's large then you need more RAM.

For upgrading, Crucial and OWC are two good brands. You can usually buy Crucial memory through either Newegg or Amazon cheaper than direct from cruical. For installation, do-it-yourself all the way. You just need a #0 or #00 Phillips screwdriver (I don't recall which one) to remove the large bottom cover to access the RAM.

For your HDD, it's normal for a swap file to be created during the existing session. As you said, rebooting clears this out and starts you fresh. The same thing can happen in a Windows environment as well in my experience.

MacRumors attracts a broad audience
of both consumers and professionals interested in
the latest technologies and products. We also boast an active community focused on
purchasing decisions and technical aspects of the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Mac platforms.